Isaiah 52:13-53:12
L: See, says the Lord, my servant shall prosper;he shall be exalted and lifted up.
A: There were many who were astonished at him—his appearance so disfigured that he looked less than human--
L: but even more will the nations be amazed at him.Kings shall shut their mouths because of him;they will witness things they never saw before,and consider things they had never heard.
A: Who has believed what we have witnessed?See how the strength of the Lord has been revealed!
L: For the servant grew up before God like a young seed,like a root out of dry ground;
A: he had no majesty to make us admire him,nothing in his appearance to make us honor him.
L: He was despised and rejected by others;a man of suffering and familiar with sin;
A: like someone from whom others turn away their faces,he was despised, and we thought him of no worth.
L: Surely he has borne our sins and carried our sicknesses;
A: yet we accounted him unwanted,struck down by God, and afflicted.
L: But he was wounded for our sins,crushed for our own wrongs;
A: upon him was the punishment that made us whole,and by his bruises we are healed.
L: All we like sheep have gone astray;we have all turned to our own way,
A: and the Lord has laid on him the sin of us all.
L: He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,yet he did not open his mouth;
A: like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,so he did not open his mouth.
L: By a perversion of justice he was taken away.Who could have imagined his future?
A: For he was cut off from the land of the living,stricken for the sins of my people.
L: They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich,although he had done no violence,and there were no lies in his mouth.
A: When you make his life an offering for sin,he shall see the fruits of his work, and shall prolong his days;through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
L: Out of his anguish he shall see light;he shall find satisfaction in his own wisdom.
A: The righteous one, the servant of God,shall make many righteous,and he shall bear their sins.
L: Therefore God will give him a portion with the great,and he shall divide treasures with the strong;
A: because he poured out himself to death,and was numbered with the sinners;yet he bore the sin of many,and made a way for the broken.
Hebrews 9:24-28
Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands -- a mere copy of the true sanctuary of God -- but he entered into heaven itself, to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. And he did not enter that sanctuary to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; for then Jesus would have had to suffer again and again since the beginning of the world. No - he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by sacrificing himself. And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
John 11:45-53
Many of the Judeans saw how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and believed in him. But some of them went to the religious leaders and told them what he had done. So the priests and religious elite called a council meeting, and said, “What do we do? This man is performing miracle after miracle. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy temple and our whole nation of people.” But the high priest said, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but as high priest he was prophesying: Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but to gather into one all the scattered children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death.
